This document relates to generation of laser pulses by using optical pulse amplifiers and pulse lasers.
Pulsed lasers of different technical properties have a wide range of uses and some examples are optical communications, optical imaging, laser material processing, laser surgery and biomedical applications, spectroscopic measurements and optical sensing applications, and laser displays. For some applications, ultra short pulsed (USP) lasers with a pulse length less than 1 picosecond, such as femtosecond pulse lasers, are attractive and examples of such applications include certain material processing, optical sensing, optical ablation, precision surgery including ophthalmology, biomedical, nonlinear studies and spectroscopy. Associated with the ultra short pulse durations in such ultra short pulsed (USP) lasers is that a laser pulse contains spectral components over a relatively wide spectral bandwidth.
In certain applications, it is desirable to use light with narrow spectral bandwidths and thus the relatively wide spectral bandwidths of short laser pulses of USP lasers may not be beneficial.